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Tuesday, May 22, 2012

The Kamela Incident and Eve Inferno - First Impressions

So after days of intense fighting to capture low-sec systems before the changes came in, the dust has settled over the low-sec war zone. Eve Online Inferno is here and I can relax some after a mad few days of last minute land-grab/defence. It's been a lot of late nights and early mornings ensuring that we held Nisuwa until the changes kicked in. It has taken it's toll, I'm tired, but happy that we have done well.

The Kamela Incident

There is also the fallout with the "Kamela Incident" to deal with. Our enemy/allies/enemies/allies, Wolfsbrigade, were in danger of losing their system to the Minmatar. When we're not shooting at W-BR because they are Amarr Militia and we are Gallente, we're teaming up together to make an awesome fleet of awesome-sauce. You may have seen us working together to kill a PL titan or this nice little fight in Kedama. When we need to compete with the big NAPfest alliances, we join together. However, during our "day jobs" we shoot each other as good war targets should! The problem was if they got locked out of their home system the ability for us to work together would be diminished for some time. That wouldn't be good for us if some awesome fight presented itself and we needed to team up.

Therefore, we helped them defend their system from the Minmatar. We didn't shoot blues but we did rep W-BR and we did shoot non-blues (we said a while ago ***here*** that because several Minmatar corps set us red for being -10, Minmatar corps had to ask for blue status which they'd automatically get). Obviously that went down like a Gallente stripper on Amarr I, and the Minmatar are a tad upset with us. All good fun. Anyway I'm sure this will lead to interesting future blog posts, but for now.....

Inferno is here!!!

So what do we have? First the obvious stuff. Obviously these are just my first impressions...

Missiles and Missile Launchers.Inferno brings us missile turrets mounted on our ships, new missile models, new missile trails, new missile flight paths, new missile explosions. Hang on, is there anything of the old missiles left?

OMG! These look great. I've always been a missile boy! There is something about your rod of death streaking towards the enemy and exploding in the distance. Now they look awesome! A picture just doesn't do it justice as a salvo of missiles streak to your target all with slightly different flight paths. And the new turrets! Awesome work!

Above is my Drake firing at a container, seven heavy missiles streaking past a plasma planet. The bottom one is the rocket launchers on my Hawk class Assault Frigate. Yes, the new missiles are VERY cool!

legs out of 10

Stealth BombersFantastic. The new SB's look like ebil ships of destruction. They are the Empire to the Rebel Alliance. They are the Dominion to the Federation. They are the Reavers to the crew of Serenity. They are awesomesauce!

The stats are the same, just the models have changed. Rather than the plain old boring ships, now we have something that looks like what it is.... nasty!

Unified InventoryI was a bit worried about this feature. When I first heard about it I though great. I have a lot of cans in my hanger labeled up 1-Ammo, 2-Missiles, 3-Mods, 4-Rigs etc. I have about 10 in all, so something to make this easier sounded ideal. I am on a restricted bandwidth so don't use the test server as I cannot afford the download size (1gb I'm guessing?). But what I heard from people who did try it wasn't hugely encouraging. Initial reaction in game, in corp and on Twitter is not encouraging with many people disliking it.

So trying it for myself, my view is.................. I don't like it, but willing to give it a few days to see if I get used to it.

legs out of 10

Now the stuff under the bonnet......

War Decs and Kill MailsThe war dec mechanics have had a significant overhaul. The costs depend on the size of the enemy you are deccing. They can hire mercs to fight for them. Either side can negotiate surrender. The 24 hour voting period has been removed for corps.

We don't use war decs much. Either we're after faction war targets or we'll go pie. So doesn't make a huge difference to us. However the new changes do look cool.The kill mails are obvious a massive improvement. They also show value of the stuff destroyed. Mmmmmm. If the code is there for that, may be the bounty hunting system where kills are rewarded from a pot as a percentage of value destroyed could be implemented in the future. Put a billion ISK bounty on a persons head and anyone killing them gets 80% of the value destroyed until the pot is depleted.

legs out of 10

Faction War

So here we are. The big thing for us and the reason I've been lacking sleep for the last week. I think it'll be a few weeks before the consequences of the changes are fulling known. The changes are major. Unable to dock in station unless you control that system. LP's for kills. LP's for offensive plexing. LP store items fluctuate depending on your sides performance in the war. Systems can be upgraded by donating LP's to the new iHub.

What effect this will have on Faction War overall nobody knows. I think we'll see over the coming few weeks as people recover from the last push in the run up to Inferno and start playing with the new mechanics. The Caldari and Amarr are on the ropes. Will they fight back? Will they die and the Minmatar and Gallente achieve Dominance.

When trying my first offensive plex I found the counter wasn't working. Tweeted that and within 10 minutes CCP Zulu was watching me plex in a Polaris frigate. Now THAT is customer service.

So far liking what I'm seeing with Faction War, but time will tell if this is a success for CCP.

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